Water lion
. The second image depicts the mourou-ngou.]] : Other names: Coje ya menia, dilali, dingonek, mamaïmé, mourou-ngou, ngoroli, ntambo wa luy, nyokodoing, nzefu-loï : Country reported: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Water lions are river monsters reported from many countries of Central Africa, almost always described as aquatic tusked animals which kill, but do not eat, hippopotamuses. Cryptozoologists speculate that they may be living sabre-toothed cats, living dinosaurs, or unknown forms of giant reptile.Heuvelmans, Bernard & Rivera, Jean-Luc & Barloy, Jean-Jacques (2007) Les Félins Encore Inconnus d’Afrique''Newton, Michael (2009) ''Hidden Animals: A Field Guide to Batsquatch, Chupacabra, and Other Elusive Creatures''Shuker, Karl (1995) ''In Search of Prehistoric Survivors They may also be confused with Congo dragons and with water elephants.Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique Cryptids classified as water lions *Coje ya menia *Dilali *Dingonek *Mamaïmé *Mourou-ngou *Ngoroli *Ntambo wa luy *Nzefu-loï When big game hunter John Hunter was in the Ituri forest in the 1930's, some pygmies saw a picture of a walrus in his book. They told him that they knew this animal well, that it was fierce, and that it killed men with its big tusks to eat them later. They offered to trap one for him, but he turned them down, believing the animal to be made-up.Hunter, John (1952) Hunter Big game hunter J. M. Cointre heard of a possible West African water lion from the Phalémé River, near the Niokola-Koba region around the border of , , and . According to local farmers, cattle in the area were often killed by enormous lions which came out of the river during the night, leaving tracks much larger than those of lions. Description Water lions have been reported from: * : Upper Cuango and Cuanza Rivers. * : Bamingui, Bangoran, Gribingui, Iomba, Kotto, Koukourou, Mbari, Ouaka, and Vovodo Rivers. * : Chari and Ouham Rivers. * : Ituri Rainforest, Lualaba River. * : Kikira, Mara, and Migori Rivers. * , , or : Niokolo-Koba Physical evidence Teeth Christian Le Noël suggested that a pair of unusually-textured elephant tusks found in a batch of Kenyan ivory could be the canine teeth of a water lion. Artifacts A cave painting at Brakfontein Ridge, Free State Province, South Africa, showing a walrus-like animal with a small head, large fangs, and paddle-like limbs attacking what looks like a porcupine has been connected with stories of water lions. Explorer Hans Schomburgk brought a sculpture of the n "water leopard" to Germany,Schomburgk, Hans (1957) Zelte in Afrika but it was eventually sent back to Zambia, apparently without even being photographed.ShukerNature: SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF SCHOMBURGK'S MISSING MICRO-SQUIRRELS - AND REVISITING TANZANIA'S FLYING JACKAL Wounded animals In 1920, a hippopotamus was found badly slashed by an unknown animal along the Chari River in Chad by hunter Marcel Halley. He shot and photographed the animal. In 1970, Christian Le Noël was asked to shoot a hippopotamus on the Chari River which had become aggressive towards canoes. After shooting it, he: :"found that it was covered with wounds that were located in the same places as Marcel Halley's hippo, wounds of the same size and of the same shape, so probably made by the same type of predator. These wounds were deep cuts, as if they had been made with a sharp object such as a sword blade. Another sore under the neck and shoulder was, in the shape of a hole, I could have pushed my forearm into. There were no infections, the wounds were recent, and I too have pictures of this animal. I did not pay attention to sex, but according to the size it must have been either a female or an immature animal." Sightings Undated Monseigneur Van Horne, bishop of Rafai in the Central African Republic, questioned the inhabitants of the Zandé country about the mamaimé, and learned that a man had recently been killed by one. Another man had been attacked, but survived.Institut Virtuel de Cryptozoologie Les félins à dents en sabre de l'Afrique 1907 Big game hunter John Alfred Jordan took a shot at a strange animal called the dingonek on the Migori River in 1907. He fired on it with a .303, prompting it to sprint at him. He also found clawed tracks the size of a hippo's. Jordan compared the animal to the lukwata,Eberhart, George (2002) Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology''Coudray, Philippe (2016) ''Guide des Animaux Cachés and, in a story confirmed by his carriers, described his encounter to Edgar Beecher Bronson:Bronson, Edgar Beecher (1910) Closed Territory :"... we were on the march approaching the Maggori, and I had stayed back with the porters and sheep and had sent the Lumbwa ahead to look for a drift we could cross—river was up and booming and chances poor. Presently I heard the bush smashing and up raced my Lumbwa, wide-eyed and gray as their black skins could get, with the yarn that they had seen a frightful strange beast on the river bank, which at sight of them had plunged into the water—as they described it, some sort of cross between a sea serpent, a leopard, and a whale. Thinking they had gone crazy or were pulling my leg, I told them I'd believe them if they could show me, but not before. After a long shauri palaver among themselves, back they finally ventured, returning in half an hour to say that IT lay full length exposed on the water in midstream. :"Down to the Maggori I hurried, and there their 'bounder' lay, right-oh! :"Holy saints, but he was a sight—fourteen or fifteen feet long, head big as that of a lioness but shaped and marked like a leopard, two long white fangs sticking down straight out of his upper jaw, back broad as a hippo, scaled like an armadillo, but colored and marked like a leopard, and a broad fin tail, with slow, lazy swishes of which he was easily holding himself level in the swift current, headed up stream. :"Gad! but he was a hideous old haunter of a nightmare, was that beast-fish, that made you want an aeroplane to feel safe of him; for while he lay up stream of me, I had been brought down to the river bank precisely where he had taken water, and there all about me in the soft mud and loam were the imprints of feet wide of diameter as a hippo's but clawed like a reptile's, feet you knew could carry him ashore and claws you could be bally well sure no man could ever get loose from once they had nipped him. :"Blast that blighter's fangs, but they looked long enough to go clean through a man. :"He had not seen or heard me, and how long I stood and watched him I don't know. Anyway, when I began to fear he would shift or turn and see me, I gave him a .303 hard-nose behind his leopard ear—and then hell split for fair! :"Straight up out of the water he sprang, straight as if standing on his blooming tail—must have jumped off it, I fancy. :"Me? Well, I never quit sprinting until I was atop of the bank and deep in the bush—fancier burst of speed than any wounded bull elephant ever got out of me, my word for that! :"That was one time when my presence of mind didn't succeed in getting away with me from the starting post, and when, finally, it overtook me, and I bunched nerve enough to stop and listen, the bush ahead of me was still smashing with flying Lumbwa, but all was silent astern. :"His legs? What were they like? Blest if I know! The same second that he stood up on his tail, I got too busy with my own legs to study his. :"Gory wonder, was that fellow; a .303, where placed, should have killed anything, for he was less than ten yards from me when I shot, but though we watched waters and shores over a range of several miles for two days, no sight did we get of him or his tracks." At around the same time, a man on the Mara river near the Kenya-Tanzanian border saw a large animal floating on a log. It was spotted like a leopard, covered in scales, and had a head like an otter. He estimated that it was around 16 feet long, although the tail was in the water. He did not report the fangs seen by Jordan. He shot the animal, which slid off the log and was not seen again.Hobley, C. W. "On Some Unidentified Beasts", Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 6 (1913) 1911 .]] Lucien Blancou was told by an old man named Moussa that in the rainy season of 1911, probably in August, a boat containing French askaris was overturned in the Bamingui River by a mourou-ngou, which seized one of the men in its mouth and dragged him underwater: :"In 1911 (this date has been cross-checked) when he was porter with a detatchment of riflemen going from Fort Crampel to Ndélé, Moussa saw one of these soldiers siezed by a ''mourou-ngou at the junction of the Bamingui and the Koukourou. The animal was shaped like a panther, a little larger than a lion but with stripes, and about 12 feet long. The background of its coat was likewise the colour of a panther's, but its footprint was oddly described as containing a circle in the middle(?).'' :"The soldier was in a canoe when the animal came out of the Koukourou 'like a hippo', just where the rivers met, seized the man in the canoe and dragged him into the water capsizing the boat, surfaced once more with the soldier in its mouth and then disappeared. The man paddling the canoe swam safely away, but the soldier's rifle and kit remained on the bottom of the river...." The man Moussa said that he had seen the animal's tracks himself, on the riverbank, and that they were larger than those of a lion. Blancou investigated the records office at Ndélé, and discovered evidence that a rifleman had been lost at around this time. The confluence of the Bamingui and Koukourou Rivers can be found near 7°32'13.6"N 19°43'37.6"E on the map. circa 1930's In the 1930's, a Portuguese truck driver heard that a coje ya menia had killed a hippopotamus along the Cuango River the night before. He and some trackers investigated, and for several hours they followed the trail of a hippopotamus and another, smaller animal. Eventually, they found the dead hippopotamus, uneaten but ripped to shreds, in an area of broken-down grass and shrubs. 1930 On 26 May 1930, French civil servant Lucien Blancou shot a hippopotamus on the River Mbari. During the night, a roaring animal that was not a Nile crocodile bit into the carcass:Heuvelmans, Bernard (1955) On the Track of Unknown Animals :"The animal still had not floated at nightfall, so we camped near by until the following day waiting for the carcass to come to the surface. During the night there was a high wind and small rain. At dawn the porters and trackers told me that they had heard a ''mourou-ngou calling near the dead hippo. When the beast had been dragged ashore I saw that there were signs that the carcass had been bitten apparently by crocodiles. But all my men knew crocodiles well. Unfortunately theyh had not though it necessary to wake me so that I could hear the 'water panther's' cry''." 1936 In 1936, Lucien Blancou was told that a mourou-ngou had carried off some men from the village of Dogolomandji on the Gribingui River in the Central African Republic. The villagers, who moved away following the incident, had not seen the animal and so could not describe it, but they knew it was not a crocodile because it left no trace of its victim. circa 1950's In the 1950s, a water lion was allegedly caught in a fishing net on the Bangoran River. The villagers killed it and retained its skull, which may still be kept by the village headman. When Christian Le Noël interviewed the headman, he was told that the story was not true, and was not allowed to see the skull despite offering a large sum of money.Institut Virtuel de Cryptozoologie LE TIGRE DES MONTAGNES : DES FELINS A DENTS EN SABRE AU COEUR DE L'AFRIQUE? circa 1962 or 1963 A diamond prospector named Denis claimed to have encountered a mourou-ngou in 1962 or 1963. He only saw the animals head and shoulders emerge from the water; its head was moving from side to side, as if it were searching for something.Opération Mourou ngou Cryptozoologia.eu 1985 In February 1985, a guide named Marcel, fishing on the Bamingui River, claimed to have been almost knocked into the water when a mourou-ngou approached him from behind and jumped into the river. He had not noticed its presence until it made a sound. Theories Mistaken identity , but its size and lack of large canines rules it out as a suspect for most sightings.]] Given the distinctive habits and appearance of water lions, there are few animals in Central Africa with which they could be mistakenly identified. The giant otter shrew (Potamogale velox) is also called mourou-ngou or "water leopard" by the Banda people, but its habits, size, and appearance are all inconsistent with the "true", water lion, mourou-ngou. During Operation Mourou N'gou, Eric Joye heard of a strange cat skin in the possession of a native hunter from Mbrès, which turned out to be a small skin belonging to the African golden cat (Caracal aurata). As this species is not usually found in the northern , Joye speculated that the mourou-ngou could in fact be an African golden cat. Although much smaller than big cats, they are known to sometimes have aquatic habits, and some individuals may have heavily spotted flanks. Joye also writes that, because of its rarity, even local people have little knowledge of these cats. However, he also notes that, though it could explain some sightings, it is simply too small to be the animal encounterd by most eyewitnesses. Incidentally, Bernard Heuvelmans theorised that the mngwa could be a giant species of African golden cat. There are a number of suggestions that the animal responsible for inflicting savage wounds on hippopotamuses is not the water lion that the attacks are so often blamed on. The idea that the wounds could have been caused by other hippopotamuses, which of course have large and powerful canines, was for a time rejected on account of the fact that only male hippopotamuses battle each other, yet many of the mysteriously injured animals are females or juveniles. However, in A Game Warden Takes Stock (1942), game warden Charles Pitman writes that, during the breeding season, he observed female hippopotamuses engaged in ferocious fighting alongside the males, making the theory more plausible. However, Pitman's description of the fighting itself convinced Bernard Heuvelmans that, at least in the case of Halley's hippopotamus, this could not be the cause of the wounds. According to Pitman, the fightsThese land battles are much more serious than the intimidation displays which take place in the water (as seen to the left), which usually start over territory and end with one animal submitting. take place on land and can last for hours, and are so violent that even the victor will often end up succumbing soon afterwards. The animals will usually charge at one another, throw their heads back, and lacerate each other's sides until one of them dies of blood loss; sometimes, a lucky stab to the heart will cause near-instant death for one combatant.Pitman, Charles (1942) A Game Warden Takes Stock According to Heuvelmans, a battle such as this could possibly explain the shoulder injury and longitudinal slashes on Halley's hippopotamus, but not the deep, hollow hole in its chest, nor the innumerable slashes covering its back. Heuvelmans believed that the wounds suggested the animal had been attacked by more than one of the mystery assailants at the same time: they leapt on its back, slashed and stabbed it, then tried to kill it with a bite to the throat/chest/shoulder area when it tipped onto its side. However, a number of cryptozoologists do maintain that the wounds could be caused by other hippopotamuses. Michel Raynal also suggested that some of the injured hippopotamuses could have been attacked by elephants, which could inflict severe goring wounds with their tusks. Aggressive young male elephants are known to sometimes kill black and white rhinoceroses, so Raynal notes that they could easily do the same to hippopotamuses. Heuvelmans argued against this, noting that elephants and hippopotamuses generally live in peace together, as they do not compete for food or habitats. Halley and Heuvelmans both discounted crocodiles because of their distinctive jaw shapes: elongated in the case of the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus), and shorter and rounded in the dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis). Lucient Blancou thought the carcass of the hippopotamus he shot could have been bitten by crocodiles, but his men knew these animals well, and they identified the scavenger as a water lion. Halley considered the possibility that the wounds on his hippopotamus were inflicted by bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas), which are known to venture into freshwater, but rejected this because he failed to discover any authentic cases of aggression by these sharks in Africa. Additionally, Heuvelmans notes that a shark would not have simply left lacerations on its prey's back and forequarters: it would have attacked the soft belly, and ripped off great chunks of flesh. Yet Halley's hippopotamus was intact, just slashed and gored. Sabre-toothed cat Unknown monitor lizard or crocodile Living dinosaur Water elephant s, which are sometimes said to have tusks, as depicted here by Philippe Coudray, may occur.]] Chalicothere Although most of the water lions are described as predators, the 's lion, the dilali, is said to feed mainly on leaves, as well as on fish. On this basis, and because of its description of having the body of a horse and the claws of a lion, Heuvelmans briefly mused the possibility that the dilali, among other Central African amphibious cryptids, could be a living chalicothere. However, he concluded that the likeness is only partial, and pointed out that there is no evidence of chalicotheres being aquatic. Captain William Hichens also suggested that the chipekwe could be an aquatic chalicothere. Similar cryptids Do you think the exists? If so, what do you think the is? Myth, folklore, hoax, or otherwise made-up Mistaken identity Unknown monitor lizard Unknown crocodilian Unknown cat Living sabre-toothed cat Living dinosaur Pygmy elephant *The tigre de montagne or "mountain tiger", a cryptid felid of the , , and identified with a sabre-toothed cat by eyewitnesses. *Water tigers, aquatic sabre-toothed cat-like animals reported from South America. Further cryptozoological reading *Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique *Heuvelmans, Bernard & Rivera, Jean-Luc & Barloy, Jean-Jacques (2007) Les Félins Encore Inconnus d’Afrique Notes and references Category:Cryptids Category:Africa Category:Angola Category:Central African Republic Category:Chad Category:Côte d'Ivoire Category:Democratic Republic of the Congo Category:Gabon Category:Guinea Category:Kenya Category:Mali Category:Republic of the Congo Category:Senegal Category:South Sudan Category:Uganda Category:Zambia Category:Water lions Category:Felids Category:River monsters Category:Swamp monsters Category:Theory: New species Category:Theory: Living fossil - Sabre toothed cat Category:Theory: Living fossil - Dinosaur Category:Featured